e-Blog (International Students)

Oct 5, 2009
Hello all, thank you for taking the time to read my diary. I shall begin with a brief introduction. I was born and raised in Vancouver Canada which is a highly multi-cultural city. Although I cannot read or write Chinese I am able to speak it thanks to my Chinese lineage. In that respect, I have an advantage over other exchange students when communicating with the local Hong Kong people.

Today I attended my Mandarin course with other exchange students, our instructor is a very nice lady from Beijing. Her presence has made the course very enjoyable so far. Later on, I worked out at the sport complex of Cityu for the rate of $3/hour which is very affordable in my opinion. The facilities are very nice and not crowded at all during non-peak hours. Afterwards, I ate at the CityU canteen and made sure I had lots of protein for proper muscle development. Thanks for reading my diary!

Oct 6,2009
Today I went to Mandarin class again. Afterwards, I went to Tung Choi street in Mong Kok looking for souvenirs to buy for my friends at home. I was able to find some funny t-shirts to bring back to Vancouver.

Oct 7,2009
Every Wednesdays and Fridays I go to Judo Class at the CityU Sports Facilities Centre. Learning Judo has been very fun so far as I am lucky to have many white belt friends to attend with. I am interested in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and am also a fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championships on T.V. Learning Judo has allowed me to understand what a tough sport MMA is.

Oct 8,2009
Thursday was a very uninteresting day for me. Today I crammed all the course materials for 6 hours to get ready for the midterms in the near future. Auditing is especially difficult as it requires the students' judgement in many cases.

Oct 9, 2009
Today I worked out again at the Sports Facilities Centre at CityU. I can feel my biceps growing thanks to all the protein I ate on Monday! I can feel the pace increasing at school, I must get ready for my midterms and group projects now. Thanks again for reading my journal. CityU and Hong Kong has been a great place to learn business so far.

Labels: 2009/2010 Semester A

Monday 28th Sep

New week starts again! I’m always sleepy on Mondays because of the various activities in the past weekend. As we only stay one semester in HK, we would like to make it the best. Especially this Saturday's BBQ and then Sunday's "shopping" tour completely strained me, making today's morning class even more challenging. I tried to keep awake but my mind was just like a machine without oil: not even a least motion to work! Finally after two hours, the class was over and I guessed that I had to review the classwork all by myself.

The rain outside reminded me the first typhoon experience in HK. I was so unlucky that I just hung up my jeans on the roof several minutes before the rainstorm. I got three things wet all over that night: two pairs of my jeans and myself... Lucky for today, the rain was not so heavy to make me soaked. Finally I got the conclusion that I'd better stay in-house on a rainy day because I really hate the feeling of damp.

Tueday, 29th Sep

Another rainy day again!!! The weather just didn’t operate well with me. How desperately, I hoped that I could go touring. Anyway, today’s class was in the right middle of the day... I wasn’t used to the timetable in the first place, however, when I came across with the crowded scene in the lunch time on the very first school day, I realized the reason for this schedule.

During the break of the afternoon class, the local friends in my discussion group were enthusiastically introduced us various interesting places in HK. Here I need to say that teenagers in HK are very smart in playing. They participate in many many different kinds of entertainment. They play mahjong a lot, they go karaoke with friends, go BBQ or eat HK style ice and sweet drinks in the late evening, knock room doors in the midnight, play PSP or Wii, or they may just gather together doing some yelling games in totally unfamiliar Cantonese. While the foreign exchange students in my floor enjoy playing crazy like dancing in the typhoon rain, jogging under hot sunshine or boating on the Pacific Ocean! Theirs seem to be much more like excited “brave games”. This kind of cultural difference can’t be seen in my home university, which brings me a lot of fresh feeling here and gives me the awareness like: oh, this is just what an exchange program offer, a chance to see a new world.

Wednesday, 30th Sep

I have been here for a month, and through the contact with people around, I gradually found that the real HK differ a lot from the one in my past understanding. For example, I used to think that as HK is such an international city that the students here must be much more open and active in the class. While actually a number of HK students resemble mainland ones in the class: quiet, avoid asking questions and being questioned. Normally voice of questions comes from mouth of foreign exchange fellow.

I went out dinner with a friend in Jordan. We had Sichuan food in a restaurant in Jordan. I have been missing my hometown dishes

ever since I came to HK. Food here is always light in flavor and the so-called spicy dish in canteen is actually not hot at all. But we do enjoy HK style dessert and those ice-sweet drinks! The food there was 80% percent like that in Sichuan, but the price could be twice! But in all I was bribed by those food! Here I want to recommend a web to all exchange students called “Open Rice”. It presents a dining map all around HK, western to eastern, dinner to snacks and expensive to cheap. I’m sure you can find one that satisfies your demand.

Thrusday, 1st Oct

Today is Chinese National Day!!! I’ve heard of the flag ceremony in the Golden Bauhinia Square before ,and I planned to see it on this special day. The ceremony was worthwhile though I had to get up at 6a.m. when my biological clock had been at 9a.m..

HK government was so considerable to prepare a national flag and a SAR flag for every visitor. The ceremony was not very grand but solemn. The crowd was greatly lighted when the two flags reached their top and was even more excited when the helicopter of the GFS flied over with two huuuuge red flags! Then a large naval vessel puffing water passed through, followed by several smaller vessels. I was so lucky to be there and saw this, although I stood kind of far.

We went to Tsim Sha Tsui at 3pm to watch the fireworks in the evening. After hanging around in the business street, we walked straight to the Victoria Harbor short after 5pm. We thought that there would be a large number of people, but the crowd there still shocked us! Dense groups

of people have already scattered along the harbor! Seated on pieces of papers, people chatted and laughed, queuing the coming three hours. Finally, our time was paid off. The firework show was fantastic! With the attracting music as the background, the firework displayed various styles and won a waaaaarm applause in the end!

Today, except the ceremony and fireworks, I was impressed as well by the sudden increase number of mainland tourists!

A friend told me that there were 330,000 tourists queuing at the Shenzhen, Luohu Immigration!!! What a crowd!!!!!

Friday, 2nd Oct

This year mainland is going to take 8 days as the holiday!!! While in HK we only have one day off... So I still need to go to today’s Life Diversity and Choices class.

This course really does big contribution to my knowledge of HK. Topics in this class are seldom mentioned in my university, or actually the society pays little attention on them. My lecturer is a socialist struggling for the minor group. He brought about different issues like HIV, Gay or Lesbian people and Transgender. Like not the traditional way commonly using inspiring cases, with those examples, he vividly informed us about the choices in life in a quiet unique way. This is really a big difference between Mainland and HK schools that the HK dares to present the real world to the younger instead of deleting them as a direct protection.

Well, the exchange diary task is finished here, but my experience in HK is still moving on!!!

Labels: 2009/2010 Semester A